Guidelines and recommendations for everything from how to properly change a light bulb
to appropriately decide on whether to do back surgery fill
our daily lives. Guidelines are appreciated by people facing
a new task or a new health condition for the first
time. Guidelines for the care of back pain have been available
through the years, many citing non-surgical
care including spinal manipulation as first line treatment. Just how well are
those guidelines followed by involved healthcare practitioners,
by back pain patients? Gormish Chiropractic & Rehabilitation found these recent reports attention-getting and thought
our Carrolltown chiropractic patients would, too. We can all
use them to create and go along with a guideline-based
treatment plan.
BACK PAIN TREATMENT GUIDELINES
Your Carrolltown chiropractor keeps
abreast of the current guidelines to best help you, our Carrolltown
back pain patient. Back in 2009, the American College of Physicians added spinal manipulation to its guidelines’
recommendations of appropriate spinal pain care choices.
(1) Gormish Chiropractic & Rehabilitation uses the well-documented Cox® Technic
System of Spinal Pain Management which has a published algorithm of
decision-making for patients suffering pain below the knee
and patients with pain that doesn’t
extend below the knee with a goal of 50% improvement in a month of care. These guidelines came out in 1996
and have been tested in clinic-based data collections in the years since. (2) Such guidelines with research backing and
proper clinical application soothe
our Carrolltown chiropractic patients!
ARE GUIDELINES BEING FOLLOWED?
We hope so! Nearly 64% of chiropractors say they use (Cox®)
flexion distraction with their spine pain patients and have the algorithm/guideline
available to them. Gormish Chiropractic & Rehabilitation is one of those
chiropractors. Beyond chiropractic, general guidelines for back
pain care are available. Are they followed? A newly
completed review of chiropractic and OT/PT use among 146,087 adults
with low back pain in the past 3 months found that
chiropractic care or OT/PT care for low back pain rose after
clinical guidelines recommending their care were introduced in
2016. Between 2002 and 2018, a bit less than a third of said
adults with low back pain reported getting chiropractic and/or PT/OT with a rise to a third after the 2016 clinical guidelines were released.
(3) This does demonstrate that guidelines help
with treatment planning but are not always followed. In Denmark
where guidelines for low back pain care are outlined
for primary care before referral found that 33% of
patients had not undergone an adequate course of treatment
in primary care before being referred. The patients were on
average 53 years old with nearly 50% of them saying
that they’d had pain for over a
year, and 75% saying that they had
pain below the knee. (4) Struggles in the healthcare system to follow guidelines are seemingly global.
CHIROPRACTIC’S ROLE
A group of chiropractic leaders assembled
their ideas on the role of the chiropractor in his/her own
practice, with his/her own patients, within the healthcare community, and
within society for healthcare. Very interesting! Individually,
chiropractors described themselves as competent
and well-educated spine and musculoskeletal care experts who provided
evidence-based care based on the current research,
clinical expertise, and patient values. They provided
patient-centered care that spreads to cooperating with other
healthcare providers with the best interest of the patient in mind. (5) Using guidelines, chiropractors are
sure that they can help their back pain patients with
those patient’s best interests in mind.
CONTACT Gormish Chiropractic & Rehabilitation
Listen to this PODCAST
with Dr. Ted Siciliano on The Back Doctors Podcast with
Dr. Michael Johnson as he illustrates his use
of The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management to relieve
a patient dealing with back pain and foot drop.
Make your Carrolltown chiropractic
appointment soon. Facing a serious bout of back
pain is certainly not equivalent to changing a light bulb for
the first time, but it is comforting to know that there are published
guidelines to navigate the way through the task!